Drive Time
by the snow and the stars
Summary: Rapunzel gets behind the wheels for the first time in her life. Jackunzel/AU/one-shot [RoBTD]


Wahhh, my first Jackunzel one-shot/drabble. It's been years since I've written a drabble for anything, and they're floating somewhere on fanfiction though I really don't want to pull any of those up ever again.

It gets a bit suggestive towards the end, a mention of a penis here and there, some swearing on Jack's behalf, and some kissing. But there is no mention of sex or anything beyond that.

Summary: Rapunzel finds herself behind the wheels for the first time in her life.

AU: Modern

Rating: **T**

**Drive Time**

* * *

Cars had never been a prominent possession within her family. Finding transportation in general, sucked, but cars were a definite no. She hardly ever saw them, and she had never, ever been inside one. They were pretty much a nonexistent invention to her for twenty years. For one, her mother hated her leaving the house.

Walking? Out of the question.

Taking the bus? Absolutely not.

A car? Darling, you're crazy.

You want a bike? That bike better have two seats, and that extra seat better be reserved for your dearest mother.

You want transportation? You don't need transportation; you have me.

But that was all before her mother died.

For two, Corona was such a small town that most people walked or rode a bike to their destinations. Buses were available at every 5-minute interval, but people preferred to just walk than spend a dollar for five minutes.

Because the town was so small with everything in walking distance, cars weren't the most ideal source of transportation, so seeing one in Corona was like seeing a phoenix. Near to impossible, even a myth of invention.

It wasn't until she moved to Burgess with Merida that she saw cars everywhere and decided, maybe she needed one. People drove cars even if their destination was a ten-minute walk. Turn a corner—a car. Two cars. Another corner, four or five more! The whole streets were filled with cars, and Rapunzel thought it was the most spectacular thing the first time she had seen so many in one day.

"Look, Merida! Another car!" Rapunzel had squealed as they walked towards Merida's boyfriend's apartment. "And another one! There are so many!"

After Rapunzel's mother had died of sickness, Rapunzel—eighteen at the time—had moved in with Merida, her best friend. With no other family or friends, she had nowhere left to go and only a couple of months before school was finished for the both of them. Merida's family welcomed her into their home like another daughter, even offering to pay for her tuition throughout college.

But Rapunzel didn't want that—she treasured Merida's family like family, not a source of income for her life. The girl strived long hours working to earn money to put herself through years of school, though in the end, was offered more than a full ride to the University of Burgess due to her orphan status.

They arrived in Burgess a few days before their dorms opened up for moving and temporarily stayed with Merida's older boyfriend Hiccup, who had once lived in Corona before going off to school.

And through Hiccup, Rapunzel met his roommate, Jack Frost.

And through her first snow ball fight, her first snow angel, her first amusement park, her first ice skates, her first movie marathon, her first sleepover, her first midnight stroll, her first kiss to her first time—her first _everything_—Jack was now going through her first car.

Ever.

"Jack!" Rapunzel squealed as she entered his apartment. "There's a car in your garage!"

The boy was in the midst of eating when she had burst in, and he was forced to finish chewing the large bite of noodles he had stuffed down his throat in order to reply. He swallowed and raised a white eyebrow. "How would you even know that?"

"Because," she began talking so fast that she could hardly breathe, "I left my key to the front gate in my room, so I went around to the garages to get in through the passcode key, and there was a car! A car, Jack!"

"Yes," he said slowly. "There is a car."

"You got a car!" she exclaimed again, pressing her hands into the sofa for emphasis. She couldn't contain her jitteriness—a car! She had never been so close to a car before, never had one in such proximity where someone so close to her even owned one. She had always thought she needed a car, that a car's transportation was absolutely necessary. Now that it was close to her (Jack's, anyway) possession, she was beyond excited. It was the most eventful thing she had encountered in the past week, the last time being that she had lost Pascal somewhere in Jack's apartment and couldn't contain her frustration or tearful emotions until Jack turned his apartment upside down to search for him. Turned out that Pascal was at home all along. Jack was not happy. "I didn't know you were getting one."

"It was kind of on a whim actually," he shrugged as he tossed his now empty bowl into the sink. "Why are you so excited? It's just a car, Punz."

"I've never been in a car!"

He narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "You've… never been in a car?"

She shook her head vigorously, and looking at her in that moment reminded him of why he liked her so much: she was cute and naïve and innocent and a whole-heartedly good girl. She had the biggest heart he had ever encountered and the biggest curiosity at the tip of her fingers. Her eyes were always filled with excitement, and being around her made him enjoy life that much more.

He smirked at her giddy figure. "Do you… want to see my car then?"

Her eyes grew big. "Really? Can I?"

He shrugged. "I don't see why not. I can teach you to drive too."

"Really?" Her voice was rich with such eagerness that he couldn't help but grin.

"Really."

He led her down to his garage, and when he opened it up, there was his car: not quite old yet not quite new but sparkling white with beautiful, black rims. He turned to look at his girlfriend, whose entire body shivered with enthusiasm. Her mouth curled upwards—so big and so bright—with excitement in her eyes that amplified by a ten-fold. It was as like watching stars dance in her pretty green orbs, as if she was seeing a movie star in real life.

When in reality, it was just a plain car that he had bought off his friend because it was cheap, and he preferred driving to walking anyway.

But no need to ruin her hallucination. She could pretend it was a rocket he had built from his bare hands, for all he cared. He was just happy that she was happy. And for some odd reason, this made her happy.

She looked at him anxiously. "Can I… touch it?"

He leaned against the doorframe, grinning, "Touch all you want."

Jack couldn't help but smile as he watched her fawn over his new car. She went around in circles, touching everything. He observed her fingers gently follow the curve of the mirrors, the tail of the car, the numbers on the license plate. Her big, curious eyes peered into everything—the windows, the rims, the headlights.

He chuckled—he knew he shouldn't have, but her clumsiness was just so adorable—as she tripped on a wire and fell onto the car with a thud, sounding the alarm. She scrambled to her feet and took a few steps away behind Jack. "It's crying," she whispered to him.

"It's scared of you," he agreed.

The two stared at the blaring car for a few minutes, her hand on his shoulder slowly unclenching the longer she watched. It wasn't until they heard a neighbor tell them to "shut that stupid car up" that Jack pulled out his remote and turned the car off. By then, Rapunzel had returned to, well, being Rapunzel.

"This is so exciting!"

He jingled the keys. "Do you want to go for a drive?"

-x-

Everything about the drive had been blown out of proportion, but it was cute, and he liked it. Or parts of it anyway. Really just her and not the drive itself.

"We're moving!" she had giggled when they pulled out of the driveway. "Everything's blurring past us!"

"That's what a car does—move."

"It's amazing!"

"It's a car, Punzel."

"Amazing," she sighed as she watched the trees and the houses fly by in seconds, sweeping the colors together like mixing paint. Already, her mind started to work in artistic motion, painting the scenery before her to save later for the canvas.

Jack had taken her out for a drive, stopping by a drive-thru ice cream shop on the way back to his apartment. It was her first drive-thru ever, and the entire process was an experiment. Going through the menu machine got her over-excited, and she refused to let Jack get a single word in as she conversed with the associate through the speaker despite her being in the passenger seat.

"Let me roll the window back up!" she said as they pulled past the menu.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Punzie, if you really want to climb over me that badly, we can just do that at home."

Which made her blush and stop fidgeting with everything for about two minutes until they pulled up at the window.

"Wait, please let me get the ice cream at least."

Again, he shook his head. "That would be kind of inconvenient for me and my penis."

"Jack!"

"I'm just saying."

When they got back, they switched seats, and Jack had to thoroughly explain everything and its functions about twice to get it through her head. But it was time for Rapunzel's first drive, and damn, Jack was kind of scared.

"Shift the gear."

"It won't move," she bit her lip anxiously. Her worried eyes turned towards him, pleading for a fix to her problem. "Why isn't it moving?"

"Are you braking?"

Her eyes brightened when she followed through with his instructions, leading to—"Jack! We're moving! I'm driving!"

Jack inwardly chuckled at her reaction. He was crossing his fingers that the drive would go well.

But probably not.

He was hoping for too much, really.

"How do I go faster?" But before he could respond, she had already pushed her foot down on the accelerator, pushing the car's acceleration far past its average number. He heard the car roar before he felt the lurch. The gravity in the car pushed everything forward, and the hammering in his chest suddenly amplified until he could hear it vibrate across the car. "It's too fast!"

"Brake!" He was going to die. He knew it. Oh, God, please help her. And him. Please help them both.

She did, slamming her foot into the brake pedal and then biting her lip as the car lurched before halting, jerking the two forward and then strapping them back into their seats like a fish hook reeling them back in for the kill. Her grip on the wheel tightened, and he could tell by her white knuckles that the five minutes she had drove had already scared her shitless.

"You have to press slowly," he breathed. He reached over to give her a reassuring caress on her hand with the swift movement of his thumb. Her green eyes had widened in a dazed fear, and the caress of his thumb made her pupils slowly return to normal. "Relax your hands. You're going to be okay. I'm right here."

She licked her lips in concentration and forced herself to loosen her grip on the wheel.

"Slowly, okay?"

She nodded.

But in ten minutes, they were still stuck in the same spot, and she was still staring at her clenched hands.

"Rapunzel," he exhaled, "we're not moving."

"I'm scared," she admitted.

"I know. But we're not moving."

"I can't move my feet," she squeaked.

"Just slowly let go," he said soothingly. "Come on, you can do it."

"It's hard!"

In time, though quite a lot of time, they had moved and progressed onto another neighborhood road and then eventually, into a street where he knew hardly any cars went through.

"I-I'm getting the hang of this!" Rapunzel exclaimed excitedly, turning to Jack to express her enthusiasm.

"Keep your head on the road, Punzie," he grimaced, afraid that the slightest distraction would lead to an accident of some sort. Even though the road was pretty much empty, he couldn't take his chances. He had never seen a worse driver than Rapunzel. It was actually kind of ridiculous how bad she was at driving. The car lurched back and forth in a rocking motion as she accelerated and stopped every two minutes. The insides of his stomach were already beginning to feel queasy from the excess motion of her stop-and-go's. She had even accidentally, while driving, pushed down the hand brake because she thought she was grabbing his hand.

It was the worst thing ever.

"I love this! This is the best thing ever!"

"Yeah, I love lurching back and forth. It's great," he replied sarcastically. A pair of headlights beamed their way just as Rapunzel accidentally let the wheel drift into the middle of the road—"CAR!"

Without thinking, his hand moved to steer the wheel into the right direction as the car zoomed past them. "Dammit, Rapunzel, you crossed the line!"

"What line?" Her teeth sunk into her lips, digging in as a reminder that she had almost just gotten them into an accident. Holy cow, driving was scary. But where was this line? She hadn't seen anything!

"The line that separates the fucking traffic!" he yelled. "You almost got us killed. Lines are there for a reason—you follow the lines. Think of it like painting or coloring. What do you do? Color inside the lines—stay inside the lines, Rapunzel!"

She was silent in response, and he was suddenly afraid that he had gone too far. She wasn't good with anger, and she never really knew how to deal with it. She either 1) ignored it, or 2) cried. And he hated it when she cried. He was about to apologize for his sudden burst of rage when she said in a small voice, almost like she was _ashamed _and _embarrassed _to admit the truth, "Sometimes, I don't color inside the lines."

He tried not to yell in response and kept his cool before he said something stupid.

The irritation in his body exhaled in one long breath. "Stay inside the lines," he repeated, gritting it out through his teeth. He would not get too angry. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He promised he would teach her. He couldn't get angry with Rapunzel. He wouldn't. He chanted to his inner self in a repeated mantra until—"What the fuck are you doing?"

"I saw a squirrel!"

"You almost hit a pole!"

"But there was a squirrel!"

"You're willing to risk our lives for a squirrel? There are thousands of them in the world—you don't have to save one and lose two human lives in the process."

"There are six million people in the world, and—"

"We're not going to die because you tried saving a squirrel."

"It's a squirrel, Jack! They're cute and fluffy—"

"And vicious," he muttered as he recalled the _one _time he had let Rapunzel talk him into playing with "fluffy nature creatures" (Animals. They were called animals, he had tried to tell her.) and almost had to go to the ER when a squirrel bit his pinky and wouldn't let go. Thank God the bite didn't get infected.

"—And they're a part of nature just as much as we are! You can't let them die!"

He sighed. "It would've ran out of the street anyway, Punzie."

"Better safe than sorry."

"Tell that to yourself," he mumbled.

"Hm?"

"Nothing," he sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "Nothing—we are, however, going home. But I'm driving us back."

-x-

"Where have you two been all day?" Hiccup quipped as they walked into the apartment.

"Driving!" Rapunzel hummed with pleasure. "Jack got a new car!"

"You learned to drive?" Merida asked her, eyes widening in disbelief. "Whose stupid idea was that?" But without waiting for an answer, she turned to Jack and threw him a glare because they both knew that Jack would have been the stupid one, of anyone, to think Rapunzel could learn how to drive.

For the first time, he had to agree with Merida. It was a stupid idea.

"It was amazing!" Rapunzel exhaled dreamily. "Everything was moving! You should have seen it! I could paint it for you!"

"It was awful. We almost died. Twice."

"We saved a squirrel!"

"It would have saved itself."

"I love driving!"

"No one," he said, giving pointed looks to both Merida and Hiccup as he took Rapunzel by the shoulders and directed her to his room, "is ever letting her drive. Again. Ever."

"But—" Rapunzel protested.

"Ever," he reaffirmed.

"I really like cars," she said innocently as he pushed her down onto the bed. She sat down obediently and then fell back until her shoulder blades hit the cushion with a soft _oomf. _

"Yeah, me too," he agreed, sitting beside her. He watched as she rolled on her side until her hand was in distance of his. Her fingers began to softly trace the outline of Jack's until they locked and interlaced each other, each finger falling snuggly in its place. "But only if I'm in the driver's seat."

"But—"

"You almost killed us. Twice," he warned.

"It was my first time! I'll be better next time!" she huffed.

"You're fucking crazy," he murmured into her hair before leaning into her neck to plant her with soft kisses.

She paused before responding, "My mother used to say that to me."

"Really," he replied in between a kiss.

"When I asked if I could learn how to drive, she said, 'Darling, you're crazy.'"

"You are. It's pretty official: worst driver ever."

"Says who?"

"Me," he stated before going in for a kiss. "I'm as official as it gets." He went in again, slowly trailing off to kiss her neck. And then her collarbone.

She pulled away for a moment, still wanting to continue the conversation. "Well how am I supposed to get around if I don't learn how to drive?"

He frowned, more because of the fact that he was interrupted than because of her question. "Like you do now—walk."

He tried to lean in again, but she continued, "What if something happens to me?"

"Nothing will."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm here."

"But—"

"Rapunzel, you're not driving. And I'm not teaching you. And you will not get your license without someone teaching you."

She was silent as she played with his hand, trying to come up with _some _way to learn how to drive. Because she felt like she needed it. Her muscles shivered against his tongue and his warm lips as he leaned back in to kiss her skin, but she couldn't stop herself from thinking. She liked driving—liked the thrill of speeding and stopping and completing ten-minute walks in just two-minute drives. But she thought everything through and knew that everything was impossible. Unless Jack wanted her to learn, she wouldn't be able to learn.

Especially now that Jack had warned Merida and Hiccup. Not that they knew either, both growing up in Corona. But if they ever tried, Jack would scream bloody murder.

"Fine," she retorted as she fell back onto her spine.

"Thank you." Jack thought she was done. And he wanted to continue what he started. His hands found their place at her waist, and his lips found its home on her lips. He started slowly, softly, before making his way down to her collarbone and then down her stomach. His hands entangled themselves through her long, golden locks, as his tongue tasted her creamy white skin.

"…What about a bike?"

"Dammit, Rapunzel, will you please stop talking? I will get you to wherever you want to go," he said in irritation.

"But—"

"Will you please just let me kiss you in peace? You are killing me and my penis here, I swear to everything that I can swear on."

And before she could answer, he had her lips locked together with his until they were so swollen that she couldn't speak about cars or bikes or anything else that night.

She changed her mind. She didn't need the car. She had Jack.


End file.
